Samsung Galaxy J3 2016

If you look at the Galaxy J3, we're sure you’d be able to recognise that it’s a Samsung smartphone. However, even if we hand it over to you, we’re almost certain you won’t be able to guess the model name. That’s because the J3 looks like just any other budget offering from the Korean giant.

With a 5-inch size, the screen on the Galaxy J3 offers good sharpness thanks to its 720p resolution. Of course, with a pixel density of 294 pixels per inch, it’s not really the sharpest display available. That said, it’s fine for most purposes unless you see it closely, which is when pixelation is visible. The AMOLED screen tech used by Samsung ensures that the colour reproduction is spot on, and brightness levels are also decent. Sadly, the phone misses out on an ambient light sensor, which seems quite odd considering most phones in its price segment offer this feature. There’s an outdoor mode, which helps in making the display legible under sunlight, though the screen remains reflective which somewhat defeats the purpose.

While Samsung’s latest and greatest, the S7 duo, come with the goodness of Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the Galaxy J3 is stuck with the old 5.1 Lollipop. The platform is topped up with Samsung’s custom skin dubbed TouchWiz. The interface is exactly the way you’d expect in offerings from the Korean brand – you get a dedicated app launcher, the notification bar with quick toggles menu on the top and a theme manager to change the look and feel of the interface.

The trump card of the Samsung Galaxy J3 is its S Bike mode. The brand actually surveyed its target consumers and realised that most of them are youngsters who ride two-wheelers. To make their commute easier, it came up with an indigenously-developed solution.

The Samsung Galaxy J3 is decidedly a budget offering, and that’s quite apparent with its specs. The same ideology continues in the camera department as well. An 8-megapixel sensor is mounted at the back, while at the front, it gets a 5MP shooter for selfies. The rear camera also gets an LED flash to illuminate low-light conditions.

Doing the grunt work inside the Samsung Galaxy J3 is a quad-core chipset running at 1.3GHz. It’s combined with 1.5GB of RAM. Sadly, the processor isn’t from leading chip maker Qualcomm or its Taiwanese rival MediaTek, but it’s from relatively lesser known company Spreadtrum. The hardware packs in decent firepower and manages to handle basic navigation or multiple apps well. Playing games is a smooth experience too, for the most part at least.